Grateful

You don’t realize what you have until you lose it, people always told me. But in a way, I never quite believed that. Every happy moment as a sad story to it. But I realized that even the most mundane thing–like being healthy–is so important to be grateful for.

Yesterday, I was walking outside to a building I was to work at. It was about a 15-minute walk, but I wasn’t feeling well, not to mention it was sweltering hot outside. I started to sweat a lot and feel dizzy, but I kept going. After a while though, I felt weak and thought I couldn’t breathe anymore. I was so scared I was going to pass out on the street, but I gathered the strength and perseverance I had learned from swimming and kept going on. When I miraculously arrived at the building on the seventh floor, I rushed to the bathroom, but I was too weak to support myself and kept bobbing up and down. At that moment I realized something as I was reading an ad on the bathroom door for a marathon training. I realized that some people must feel like this all the time, but unlike me, they probably never knew what it felt like to run around like everyone else. I finally went to my desk and put my drenched head down on my arm. I don’t ever want to forget this moment because it makes me grateful for what I have, and for all the pains I will never even begin to understand.